I got a job offer over the holiday break while visiting a former colleague in Washington. The position is a year long internship managing and being the curator of a small gallery in rural Louisville.

No, people. I am not talking about Louisville (Loo-ee-ville), Kentucky. I am talking about a whole other Louisville (Lewis-ville) altogether. Louisville, Georgia to be exact, which is a town inside the splendor of Jefferson County. Not that that would make any heads roll.

The gig is pretty sweet. The hardest thing I'd have to accept is the idea of living in a rural town of 1500 people for a year. However, that may be part of this gig's hidden riches. The internship is only one year long so there's light at the end of the tunnel. There has only been one person in the position before - some guy the town has dubbed "John-Boy" - so it is hard to say what the running opinion of the internship is at all.



I'd be the manager of a new gallery that opened in what used to be Louisville's old fire house (in planner speak, adaptive reuse). I'd get the apartment that is above the gallery. Therefore, no commute and no need to look for a place upon arrival. Pay is meager, but who ever got rich managing an art gallery in the rural south? It's not about the money. Anyway, I heard that you can live like royalty on the stipend they give you.

I was sitting at dinner the other night with my sister musing about what it would be like to live a year in Louisville, GA. I pretty much deduced that if I didn't do this internship, it would be HIGHLY HIGHLY HIGHLY unlikely that I'd ever live in the southern U.S. in my life. Is this something I am willing to forgo? Well, perhaps. I need to sleep on it. This kind of position is complete immersion into the belly of small town development politics. Basically, the job is to network with the town honchos, make outreach efforts with other places that can help feed visitors to Louisville, come up with exhibit concepts, and keep an eye out on other opportunities for development in the town. The next big project in Louisville is turning the town's old colonade bank building into a southern bluegrass bar venue. My colleague just bought the place for a cool 45K and she'd itching to get it operational ASAP. John-Boy is supposed to take over as manager. Sounds cool.

I'll be headed down to good ol' Louisville in early February to check it out. So stay tuned, y'all.